Alice's Blighted Profession: A Sketch for Girls

A surviving artifact from an era when women were still fighting for the right to practice law, this 1919 comedy stages Alice, a young lawyer in New York City, as she battles not only the courts but a parade of bizarre applicants desperate for work. The office becomes a stage for period comedy: society matrons, charity workers, and eccentric stenographers all drift through seeking employment, while Alice's friend Diana attempts to stage a comedic intervention meant to pull her back toward 'proper' feminine pursuits. Clifford writes with sharp wit about the absurd double bind facing early professional women: be ambitious and face ridicule, or retreat and be forgotten. The play ultimately celebrates female drive and solidarity, allowing Alice to claim her worth in a world determined to see her fail. As a document of its time, it also carries the uncomfortable weight of early 20th-century American theater's reliance on ethnic stereotyping, a reminder that even progressive narratives can carry the fingerprints of their era.